JEDDAH: A total of 356 male and female students won prizes for the King Abdul Aziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness’ (Mawhiba) Bebras challenge. The contest, held in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, is an international initiative that seeks to promote informatics and computational thinking among school students of all ages. Participants are usually supervised by teachers who may integrate the Bebras challenge in their teaching activities. The Kingdom launched the experimental version of the challenge in 2019 in which only 73 schools took part. However, this year more than 3,370 public, private and international schools participated in the contest. According to results, 60 male and female students won gold, 108 students clinched silver medals and 189 won bronze. The Bebras competitions are made of a set of short online problems called Bebras Tasks. The tasks are fun, engaging and based on problems that computer scientists often meet and enjoy solving. Dr. Saud bin Said Al-Mathami, secretary-general of Mawhiba, urged parents of students to help nurture their talents. “Don’t get bored of their queries,” he said. He said Bebras is one of the several tools Mawhiba is using to identify talented students.